First market: Africa
Corridor is built for cross-border payments anywhere (see The global opportunity) and starts in Africa, where stablecoins are already the settlement asset of choice for cross-border flows. The rails exist; what is missing is the ledger that lets licensed payment companies run on them across providers and chains.
Five years of on-chain value
Section titled “Five years of on-chain value”On-chain value received in Sub-Saharan Africa, from Chainalysis’ annual Geography of Cryptocurrency reports (July-to-June years, labelled by the year they end):
| Period | Value received | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 2020 – Jun 2021 | $105.6B | |
| Jul 2021 – Jun 2022 | $100.6B | −5% |
| Jul 2022 – Jun 2023 | $117.1B | +16% |
| Jul 2023 – Jun 2024 | $125B | +7% |
| Jul 2024 – Jun 2025 | $205B | +52% |
| Five-year total | $653B |
xychart-beta title "On-chain value received, Sub-Saharan Africa ($B)" x-axis ["2021", "2022", "2023", "2024", "2025"] y-axis "USD billions" 0 --> 220 line [105.6, 100.6, 117.1, 125, 205]The last year made Sub-Saharan Africa the third fastest-growing crypto region in the world, behind Asia-Pacific and Latin America. Nigeria alone received more than $92 billion.
The stablecoin share
Section titled “The stablecoin share”Stablecoins account for 43% of the region’s on-chain transaction volume, which puts last year’s stablecoin flow at roughly $88 billion. Chainalysis also reports frequent multi-million-dollar stablecoin transfers linking Africa, the Middle East and Asia for energy and merchant payments: trade settlement, not speculation.
The trade behind the flows
Section titled “The trade behind the flows”| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Africa’s merchandise trade with the world, 2024 | $1.5 trillion (+13.9%) | Afreximbank African Trade Report 2025 |
| Intra-African trade, 2024 | $220.3 billion (+12.4%) | Afreximbank African Trade Report 2025 |
Every import is a payment out of Africa, and every export a payment in. Corridor serves both directions on the same hub: collections in, payouts out.
Why now
Section titled “Why now”Stellar carries a 32-byte MEMO_HASH on every transaction, settles in seconds for fractions of a cent, and converts between issued assets on its own order books.
Anchors settle on Stellar itself, over the same SEPs, so a corridor is a home domain and an asset rather than an integration.
Where no anchor serves a currency yet, licensed partners such as Paj expose business APIs with signed webhooks, behind the same interface.
KMS and MPC providers sign Ed25519, so a licensed company can route payouts without handing anyone its keys.